Le sexe et l'amour

If it were possible to give a movie zero stars, this would be it. I have seen many other mondo movies and this one easily takes the 'booby' prize as worst one created - by far.

I have to give credit to Something Weird Video for putting this stuff out on dvd but surely there are many more deserving movies of this treatment?

This mondo feature (released as a double feature of Mondo Bizarre & Mondo Freudo) both are a pretty tame affairs. Released in 1966, these films say a lot about the mental state of men during these times.

The way the film is made it obviously highlights mainstream mens repressed sexual fascination with women. That being said, for balance the film makers included one token half naked male.

Everything is obviously faked as the viewer is exposed to everything from bra fittings behind double sided mirrors, lovers frolicking on the beach, to strip club shows to slave auctions in the desert. All contrived to tell the story of men perving on naked women in different situations.

There is little here of value to educate or shock, considering to what's available to anyone with internet access in todays modern world.

The film is rather a time capsule highlighting the nature of mens sexual desires and fantasies in the mid sixties.

I have seen a few "Mondo" in my time including the likes of "Faces of Death", a great deal of the "real" footage is obviously fake and staged, this being no exception. This starts off with a powerful camera (100mm lens or something) filming people - including families with young children - swimming and sunbathing on a California beach, accompanied with some old rock and roll music. A strange way to start a documentary on worldwide sexual practices. Then it's night time and the camera "secretly" films young couples frolicking in the water and making love on the sand, this was obviously staged and filmed up close. And when I say making love I mean the girls get their tops off and the men keep their pants on! Then it's on to a private club in London where strippers are allowed to bare all but sadly we don't get to see all. This is followed by an interview with two "lesbian" prostitutes with very phoney accents. Next we're back in the US and at a beatnik cafe where a middle aged man rubs body paint over a naked woman, creating prints which he sells for good money. Artist or con-artist? Dirty old man for sure! Then it's over the border into Mexico where our "secret" camera spies on young women being sold as sex slaves, the smiles on their faces suggest that maybe they are happy to be on camera (?). A couple of very dull Mexican strippers are seen before heading to New York to meets a coven of "Satanists". The priestess/witch is pretty hot but the bright red paint that is meant to be sacrificial blood is as fake looking as the coven. In Tokyo we go to a sadomasochist club where the topless girls, big grins on their faces, look more like the whip "striking" them is more ticklish than painful. Finally we see a spot of mud wrestling in Germany. Yuck! If this had been made a decade later it would no doubt be far more explicit but sadly this 1966 offering offers very little in the way of titillation, just endless scenes of middle aged men leering at young topless women.

This is a strange film to call a mondo film. Seems to be a better name for it would have been Hidden Camera T&A, or maybe Mondo Nude-o. The entire film seems to be faked. They supposedly travel around the world, but models on a supposedly call girl billboard in London are recognized as American models from New York. A girl who supposedly lived in London all her life, has no English accent at all! If that was true, it would be AMAZING, sadly I think they were just BSing us.

Basically what you have here is scene after scene of girls finding reasons to take off their clothes and show the viewer some T&A. A man who uses nude girls to paint on. Men who go to private clubs to leer at strippers, call girls lesbians who will get naked and let men watch them make out. Tijuana, where poverty, slave trading and nudity go hand in hand. There are no genuine strange customs or rituals. (well unless you consider obvious fake satanic cults who get nude a ritual) There certainly is no animal mutilation (can you make a mondo film without animal mutilation!?) This comes off as an attempt to cash in on the Mondo craze and show some skin, lots of skin.

It's all pretty slow moving and tame by todays standards I suppose. Obviously completely bogus, the film is nicely shot and there are an awful lot of naked girlies to keep you entertained, so I suppose it's not a total waste. Still not what I'd consider required viewing, not even sure I'd consider it a mondo film.